♂Henry Shirley

Henry Shirley (died about 1220) was an English knight, lord of Ettington in Warwickshire and of Edensor in Derbyshire in the reign of King John. He followed his lord, the Earl Ferrers, to Poitou in the king’s service, and the land at Edensor that he had sold when he went was restored to him by royal writ. He was the twenty-fourth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Sewallis Shirley (died before 1255).

Life

Henry was the eldest son of Sewallis Shirley and his wife Alice, and in his charters he styled himself “Henricus filius Sewalli”, Henry son of Sewallis. The family is said to have held Ettington since 1086, when a man named Saswalo held it of Henry de Ferrers at the time of the Domesday survey. Henry had succeeded his father by 1205. He confirmed to William son of Serlo de Grendon the lands at Bradley and Sturston that Serlo had held of his father, in a charter witnessed by Hugh Bardolf^W and the other king’s justices then sitting at Nottingham, and he witnessed deeds of Serlo de Grendon himself.

Like his father he held of the Ferrers family, and about 1195 he witnessed a charter of William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby^W. A writ of August 1205 records that he had sold his land at Edensor when he went to Poitou with the earl in the king’s service. That year he offered the king forty marks to have Edensor back as he had held it when he entered the earl’s service, and in the seventh year of John’s reign (1205–06) the sheriff of Nottinghamshire was ordered to give him possession of it again.

At Ettington he founded a chantry^W of St Nicholas in the parish church. His wife’s name is not known. He is said to have died in 1220 and to have been buried in the chapel of St Nicholas that he had built there, and his son Sewallis succeeded him.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Sewallis and the Shirleys of Ettington down to Beatrix Shirley (died 1483), and from her through the Bromes, Dentons, Purefoys and Thornes to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Dates and records

Evelyn Philip Shirley’s Stemmata Shirleiana (2nd ed., 1873, pp. 12–14) calls him lord of Ettington in 1205–06 and gives the livery of the manor of Edensor by the king’s precept in 7 John from Dugdale’s notes of the Close Roll. It prints his charter for Bradley and Sturston in its appendix. It gives his death as 1220, with his burial in his chapel of St Nicholas, on the authority of Sir Thomas Shirley (died 1654), a statement it says is to be “received with caution”. The Rev. S. P. H. Statham, “Later Descendants of Domesday Holders of Land in Derbyshire”, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal 49 (1927), dates the fine of forty marks for Edensor to 1205 and the writ to the sheriff to August of that year, and calls the date of his death uncertain.

The generations

The early Shirley generations are counted differently by different writers. Statham numbers this man Henry (III) son of Sewal and gives him a son Ralph and a daughter Avice, wife of Serlo de Mungay, as well as a son Sewal who was already married by 1194. The Victoria County History of Warwickshire (vol. 5, 1949) puts a Henry who died about 1165 as the father of the Sewallis of 1242 and 1247, two generations fewer than Stemmata Shirleiana allows. This page follows Stemmata Shirleiana, which makes Henry the father of the Sewallis named as “Sewall fil Henr” in the fine of 1247.